With a new album, For Melancholy Brunettes ( Sad Women), out on Friday, it’s a big week for Michelle Zauner, lead vocalist and guitarist for the band Japanese Breakfast—and a heck of a time for the pipes to burst at her upstate New York home. “I’m kind of upscale glamping right now,” she says when I ring her on Sunday morning.
Yet Zauner is someone who’s learned to roll with the punches. Japanese Breakfast was already an indie darling when the band’s third studio album, Jubilee—featuring the breakout single “Be Sweet”—came out in 2021. (A Grammy nomination for best new artist would follow.) The same year, Crying in H Mart, Zauner’s candid meditation on her Korean roots and the illness and death of her mother, Chongmi, was released to similar raves.
What’s it like, as an artist, when you get everything you want? Japanese Breakfast’s new album—recorded, for the first time, in a professional studio—attempts to answer that question. Yet in all its gloom (a reaction to the jubilance of Jubilee), For Melancholy Brunettes also finds Zauner finally feeling like herself again.
As she begins to plot a nationwide tour (kicking off with a plum Coachella spot next month), Zauner speaks to Vogue about the ironic nature of success, the evolution of her creativity, and her highly anticipated next book.
Vogue: This is your first album since Jubilee and the release of Crying in H Mart, which both came out in 2021. How has your life changed since then? Is it a complete 180?
Michelle Zauner: I wouldn’t say it’s 180. I think that success afforded me a financial stability that’s really quite delightful. I’m still doing a version of the same things, just kind of on a larger scale. I don’t know if my life has changed all that much since before the book came out, but it definitely has given me the privilege to take certain risks and make bigger splashes in my work.
Jubilee garnered critical acclaim and a Grammy nomination, while Crying in H Mart landed on the New York Times Best Seller List. This new album is about grappling with your success, about which your feelings aren’t as black and white as it would seem. What do you want people to know about what it’s like when you get everything you want?
I think I’m in an interesting place because I know that the narrative of this record is starting to become, “She had an enormous year, but she was miserable inside!” That’s not at all what I’m interested in peddling. I think it was a natural move for me to want to make an album that was a little less extroverted and more delicate and complex. And at my age, I’m very focused on the passing of time and reflecting on life in a certain way, so the songs kind of turned into that. I felt so lucky, but I also felt like I had to learn a lot during those three years [about] how to deal with the pressures of becoming a larger artist, and just getting to a place where I felt like I deserved that level of attention. I went through some kind of growing pains dealing with that, so I think that some of the songs that are a bit more personal about my life at that time are about that. But a lot of the record is also storytelling about people dealing with specific moments in their life, and reflecting on the passage of time and the mistakes that they’ve made.
When it comes to the new album, you’ve said it’s “gloomier in the best way.” What did you mean by that? Are you the kind of person who revels in sad music when they’re sad?
Writing Jubilee was a conscious decision to make something that was purposefully jubilant after making two albums and then a book about grief. It all felt really unexpected and gratifying for me at the time. And then to tour an album about that and to be so extroverted and joyful for three years, I think I naturally kind of exhausted that side of my person and wanted to return to what I feel is my more innate state, which is one of melancholy. It’s not a violent sadness or longing, but I think it’s just a quieter state of being—a very reflective state of being. I don’t even think of it as a negative, depressive thing, but as a more reflective, realistic state of looking at your life and the world.
I experienced a loss recently, and was going to bring it up to you, but then I thought that must happen all the time. At this point, is hearing the stories of other people’s losses gratifying to you, or just emotionally exhausting?
It does happen to me quite often, but I wouldn’t say it’s emotionally exhausting. It feels odd to call it gratifying also. I feel a sense of responsibility, I guess. I often [experience] an inability to know exactly how to be there in that moment for that person. I don’t think that anyone expects anything in particular from me, but I honestly take it as the highest honor. I think it’s really opened my eyes to just how much grief there is in the world. I think that it’s really beautiful that my book has found its way to some people who have needed it and made them feel just slightly less alone in their grief. It’s an eye-opening and humbling experience and it means a lot to me.
Did writing a book, and the success of it, change the way you write music?
I don’t know. I mean, it was such a validating experience to feel so deeply understood. The response to both Jubilee and Crying in H Mart was this feeling of great understanding from the people who found something for themselves in it. So that just maybe gave me the confidence to go a little bit deeper. I always think of the fourth album as the artist’s album, and I really felt like I just had full reign over making something that was even more challenging [for me].
A huge theme of Crying in H Mart is eating, and how you bonded with your mother through Korean food and culture. The cover of the new album is your head down at a set table. Is there any correlation between those two things?
Yeah, but I’m not sure if it’s exactly the way that people might think. I really love the idea of being present on the cover, but not showcasing my face. I think that this album feels much more introverted than the last, and I feel like that was something that I wanted to indicate on the cover. I knew I wanted to be in that position; in a lot of paintings there is this trope of melancholic women kind of collapsed over. I like the idea of combining that with still-life imagery that sort of has its own symbolism that reflects the lyrics in some ways. So, on the table there is a bowl of milky broth, which is referenced in “Orlando in Love.” There are flowers and a vase, which I mentioned in “Winter in LA.” I like the idea of each item on the table having some kind of symbolic meaning, as though it were a painted still life. But I also think that the overall effect is almost like this spoiled prince who is sort of disinterested in everything at his table, which I think was sort of an emotion I was feeling from the attention that I received from both the book and the record. It’s not a narrative I wanna go into too much detail about, ’cause I just don’t think it’s very compelling. But I do think that there’s this, like, “Wow, I have all of this and yet there’s still this melancholic feeling inside of me,” which is sort of what I feel the cover evokes.
Listening to the song “Leda,” with its themes of infidelity, I couldn’t help but relate it to the themes of infidelity in the book. What’s it like for you when people draw connections between your work and your life story?
I think that all of the songs can be appreciated in the way that people choose to interpret them. One really beautiful thing for me about songwriting is that it’s very easy to float in and out of fiction and non-fiction. There are parts of the record that I think are extremely personal to me, and then there are parts of the song that are just complete fiction, you know? “Orlando in Love,” for instance, is just complete fiction, and I’m sure subconsciously there’s some part of [it] that I identify with. It’s a foolish romantic man that succumbs to the call of a siren. There’s also a lot of complete fantasy on this album. But at the end of the day, there are still songs about real human emotion, flaws, interactions, and experiences. It’s safe to assume that people will probably map what they will from your personal life. I was just talking to my husband about the song “Styrofoam Plates” by Death Cab for Cutie. I remember when I was a teenager, thinking, man, Ben Gibbard has led such a tough life. It really painted him in this certain light for me, only to find out that that song is largely about his friend’s experience. So I think it’s all just a natural part of mythologizing artists.
So, for your lead single, “Orlando in Love,” take me into the mind of the songwriter. Why Orlando?
It has nothing to do with Florida. It’s really funny because someone recently asked me about that song, as well as “Magic Mountain,” which is also a ride at Six Flags. Wouldn’t it be funny if I made a Florida album? But I read a lot when I’m preparing for a record, and I had been reading about this epic poem called “Orlando Innamorato” [by the Italian renaissance writer Matteo Maria Boiardo], which translates to “Orlando in Love,” and I found that title to be so romantic. And I think around the same time, I had just read [Thomas Mann’s] The Magic Mountain, and was kind of combining ideas about its main character, Hans Castorp. I wrote them both down probably on that same page. When I opened up my notebook and saw “Orlando in Love,” I came up with a progression that I felt sort of embodied that phrase. Its character is an avatar for this record about sort of foolish romantic people who are making mistakes and kind of suffering the consequences of those mistakes.
What gives you the most comfort, cooking and eating or writing and performing?
Oh, it’s definitely food, because it’s completely divorced from my work now, you know? I still take great comfort in music, but because it’s such a huge part of my working life, I have a sort of more complicated relationship to it than food, which is mostly just a very positive relationship. Cooking has always been a hobby that I enjoyed which was totally divorced from my livelihood or my ambitions. I never aspired to be a chef. Especially when I started cooking after my mom died, I was able to do it more often because I was working a nine-to-five job and it became a creative outlet to enjoy after work. But it was also a natural thing that I gravitated towards after she passed away since it made me feel closer to her.
Have you detected any differences in the nature of music success versus literary success? Not many people have enjoyed both.
That’s a really great question. The industries are certainly very different. My relationship with the publishing industry has been so charmed, and I was quite spoiled by it. It’s kind of hard, honestly, to return to the music industry, where it’s a bit more of a grind. I wish I had a good answer, but I don’t know if I do.
With the album being released into the world, how are you feeling?
I’m really excited. I really feel like this is an album to be appreciated in its entirety. I had a kind of tough time with the single rollout, so I really am looking forward to it just being all out there. But I’m also really nervous. I hope people like it. It’s also kind of a tough time right before a record comes out, because you kind of just go through feelings of I care so much and I don’t care at all. But there’s nothing I can do about it. I think ultimately I’m really just ready for it to be out.
This album is the first one you recorded in a professional studio setting. Did that change your creative process?
Well, I’m an indie artist, so studio budgets have always been quite tight. It has always felt more impactful to me to work in a sort of semi-professional studio space, like in a house or a sort of warehouse converted into a semi-professional studio so I can just have the time with my ideas and a producer to really explore all of the instrumentation, arrangements, and directions the song can go. But over the course of the last record cycle, there were some experiences where I did live sessions in real studios and really saw what a difference it can make in the fidelity of a recording. So it was something I always had in my back pocket that I’d never done. It felt really hard-earned and I felt very ready to finally be in a real studio [Sound City in Los Angeles], especially where Tom Petty and Fleetwood Mac recorded, as well as Nirvana for Nevermind.
It’s almost like the difference between shooting digital and film; there is just a sort of seriousness. I think there was so much more focus on just getting great performances and letting our amazing gear do the work of capturing it. We also felt like we were able to go a little bit sparser with some songs and just let things really breathe. Maybe this is good for Vogue, but it’s sort of like going natural versus putting on makeup. If you don’t know what you’re doing, you’re just sort of like putting more and more and more makeup on. But if you know what you’re doing and you have the right tools, you are able to do something that brings out natural features. That’s sort of what it felt like, being in a proper studio.
I know you’ve been writing a diary which you’re going to turn into your next book. What can you tell us about that?
Last year I lived in South Korea to study the language, because it turns out I knew a lot less than I thought. But my publisher was really enthusiastic about me doing a second book with them and was really open to whatever I wanted to do. My mother always said to me as a young child, “If you just lived in Korea for one year, I think you would learn the language.” So I wanted to put that to the test, and I thought a lot of people would be curious about what a year abroad looks like, if you dedicate yourself fully to how far you can get with it. So I was just going to language school and living my life for a year there and documenting the process. I don’t want to rush it, but I would love for it to come out next year or the year after. But you know, when it’s done, it’s done.
This conversation had been edited and condensed.